Wireless receiver devices, such as pagers, are becoming an increasingly popular communication device. Some wireless receiver devices are now capable of receiving textual messages that can be viewed on a display on the pager. A message may consist of letters, numbers, and or any typographic symbol supported by the wireless receiver device. One common character set used for communication with wireless receiver devices is the well-known ASCII character set.
Existing wireless receiver devices can only display a small number of characters at any one time. In addition, most wireless receiver devices have limited memory capacity and cannot store large messages. Even where a wireless receiver device has a significant memory, the size of that memory will necessarily limit the total number of messages that can be stored at any one time. In addition, charges for sending and receiving messages are often based on the number of characters in the message.
Due to the limited memory available on existing wireless receiver devices, people who send textual messages to wireless receiver devices often use abbreviations in an attempt to transmit the maximum amount of information with a minimum number of alphanumeric characters or symbols. Unfortunately, the user of the wireless receiver device may not be able to comprehend the meaning of the abbreviation that was intended by the sender. Different people abbreviate different words in different ways. Some message senders may be unaware of the limited memory capacity of the wireless receiver device. It would be desirable if senders of messages to wireless receiver devices did not have to worry about the length of their message or how to abbreviate that message.
Accordingly, a need has arisen for a method and apparatus to translate a message intended for a wireless receiver device so as to condense the message and allow more information to be communicated to the user of the wireless receiver device with less characters.